Side Effects City
I’m going to be useless for a little while, and incommunicado.
I started my new meds last night, and I am all… fuzzy. Not necessarily a good-fuzzy, not necessarily a bad-fuzzy, but I am not on my game. At all. I’m moving in slow motion.
But, damn, I got a good night’s sleep for the first time in… forever.
Hopefully I’ll be back together soon.
Some answers and a direction
Ok, after searching my conscience, I came to a realization (at 3 am):
Because of everything else going on, I am also now in a state of clinical depression. Again.
I talked to my doctor this morning (after getting word that mom had to go to the ER for tests to see if she had a heart attack last night) — he has said that he is confident I have a) fibromyalgia, b) chronic fatigue syndrome, and c) clinical depression secondary to illness, and/or d) all of the above. He’s told me to follow up with my general physician, and is starting me on amitryptiline. If the amitryptiline is ineffective (or gives me adverse side effects), we’ll try another anti-depressant.
And that’s where he said we’ll leave it. So I have fm/cfs, and will just have to live with it. Perhaps I’ll be able to be more proactive about my condition(s) after some of the depression is relieved.
Here’s hoping.
Update on medical testing
I saw the internist on Friday. We exhaustively went over my symptoms, discussed some possible diagnoses, and then I was sent for labwork. They drew 10 large vials of blood; I gave up about a pint of blood for tests. I left feeling woozy, and very scared. All told, the labs cost about $3000. Thank god for insurance.
Supposedly, I should be getting the TSH levels back today. The other results will take over a week, and with the holiday, I likely won’t see those results until maybe mid-week next week.
Doc threw around a lot of possibilities, and it’s all making me so nervous. I’m trying very hard to stay calm and positive through this, but I just get so stressed and emotional, plus we’re all still recovering from a very nasty flu.
Some of the things he said are that it’s very possible & very likely that there is some kind of thyroid disease. We’ll know when the TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) results come back today. He also said that there may be something else going on: Lupus, Sjrogen’s syndrome, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, poly-cystic ovarian syndrome, adrenal gland damage, and a coupld of others that I don’t remember.
I’ve just been praying that it’s only thyroid disease. That I could live with. The others seem worse.
I’ve put in a call to the doc’s office asking for my TSH results, and am now just waiting for them to call. All this waiting is driving me nuts.
Waiting for lab results
I saw the internist on Friday. We exhaustively went over my symptoms, discussed some possible diagnoses, and then I was sent for labwork. They drew 10 large vials of blood; I gave up about a pint of blood for tests. I left feeling woozy, and very scared. All told, the labs cost about $3000. Thank god for insurance.
Supposedly, I should be getting the TSH levels back today. The other results will take over a week, and with the holiday, I likely won’t see those results until maybe mid-week next week.
Doc threw around a lot of possibilities, and it’s all making me so nervous. I’m trying very hard to stay calm and positive through this, but I just get so stressed and emotional, plus we’re all still recovering from a very nasty flu.
Some of the things he said are that it’s very possible & very likely that there is some kind of thyroid disease. We’ll know when the TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) results come back today. He also said that there may be something else going on: Lupus, Sjrogen’s syndrome, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, poly-cystic ovarian syndrome, adrenal gland damage, and a coupld of others that I don’t remember.
I’ve just been praying that it’s only thyroid disease. That I could live with. The others seem worse.
I’ve put in a call to the doc’s office asking for my TSH results, and am now just waiting for them to call. All this waiting is driving me nuts.
14 Months Old!
My baby is 14 months old today!
Someone please tell me how that happened so fast???
Texas Vacation
Our trip to Texas was fabulous. Two weeks! It took us 13 hours to get down there, and JR did so wonderfully, again, that it was surprising. I think John and I were more hyped up about travelling with a toddler than we needed to be.
We got to spend time with JR’s little cousins, aunts, uncles, & grandparents while we were there. They all seemed to have just so much fun together, and I know JR misses them now that we’re home. We spent a few days at the beach in Port Aransas, where JR felt the ocean for the first time. Priceless. And I tanned for the first time in, oh, forever. (Daddy got a little burnt though.)
John took JR to Kiddie Park, a McDonald family tradition, and they both had a blast. It was the first time that JR rode something without us, and he didn’t want to get out! He learned a bunch of new words down there, and had so many charming moments that it’s hard to encapsulate them here.
He got sick though — 13 months with only one cold, ever, then we get down there and he gets a cold, gets better, and that’s followed a few days later by another bug. That meant two pediatric urgent care visits, but everything turned out fine.
We had a day with friends and their kids, and it was so nice to have them all in the same place. I got to go shopping, we tried to go to Retama Park one night (failed effort), and I fell in love with a health food store down there.
Then it was 18 hours back home (after delaying our flight for a day so JR could get over his intestinal bug). Even though it took freakin’ forever to get back, JR again did marvelously. He’s a born traveler!
More later!
Sick
I’m tired of being sick.
I’ve been on five different antibiotics over the last three weeks, and have had at least one antibiotic in my system continuously since October 19th. I feel crappy.
We got back from our wonderful vacation, and I got sick. I got hit with a kidney infection, and a few other infections, all at the same time. The doctor I saw on the 19th was nothing short of pathetic, and after suffering all day my husband took me to the urgent care clinic. I had gotten labs run earlier that day, and no one would help me. At urgent care, they were prepared to have me redo the labs to confirm the kidney infection that I suspected, but MAGICALLY the test results were IN THE COMPUTER SYSTEM. Had I not gone in when I did, I was bad off enough that I would have been hospitalized. F*^%ers.
So I start improving, bit by bit, and then my arm starts hurting. Yep, another infection. After talking to the nurse a couple times last Monday, she said I needed to come in to urgent care again. John was at work, so I had to pack up enough stuff to keep JR taken care of for a few hours, then hail a cab downtown. They checked me out there, and decided that I needed to be seen by radiology at Fairbanks Memorial. So another cab ride, more waiting, all hassle, and I finally get seen at Memorial. Good news, no clot. But an “indeterminate” infection, and my fifth antibiotic. My husband had gotten a ride all the way in from work, and stayed for a couple of days to help me out. (I have such a wonderful husband, I’m so lucky.)
So I still have a small bump in my arm, but it doesn’t ache like it did, and I’m just now finally starting to see a return of something resembling energy. I’ve been completely dragging ass for weeks, and have just been so. worn. out.
It’s a good thing I’m starting to feel better because we’re moving and I have to pack.
But I’m kind of stressed about my upcoming appointment with an internist. I tested positive for ANA (anti-nuclear antibodies), and was told that I quite likely have some sort of auto-immune ailment. I don’t want it to be lupus.
My appointment with the internist is next Friday. It can’t come fast enough.
